


You Are A Culled Troll

by botgal



Series: No Worse, But No Better [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Beforus, Beforus Culling, Child Abuse, Conditioning, Culling, Dubcon or Noncon Moirallegiance, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Pale Molestation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 21:33:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9517106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/botgal/pseuds/botgal
Summary: Your name is Kankri Vantas. You are a culled troll.Now with acompanion piece.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hey look, I'm writing something other than porn for a change. Surprise surprise.

Your name is Kankri Vantas. You are one sweep old. You are a culled troll.

You don't yet know what this means for you. Few would at your age. At this age, for you, all culling means is that you are being held in a larger troll's arms. The flesh of the creature holding you should not be this color, or this cooler temperature. Your skin feels nearly feverish against them, even at only your healthy temperature.

You are a mutant, an abnormality which should not exist in the gene pool. This is why you have a troll instead of a lusus and cold skin at every touch. Why you are so closely monitored by your culler and given almost weekly medical examinations to be certain that nothing is wrong with you.

You're too young to really know any of this. You don't know that this isn't how things are for others.

You don't know that you should not exist.

–

Your name is Kankri Vantas. You are two sweeps old. You are a culled troll.

Age brings new understanding, and unanswered questions. You are able to walk and talk. You know your house and little more. You are rarely taken outside. Sometimes your cool blooded culler has their quadrant mates over. You're made to hold still and let yourself be pet and held and cooed over. If you fuss you are told that you're doing things wrong. You're supposed to let this happen.

If you don't, your culler rings that little silver bell they always seem to have with them. A negative response from you receives a ring of the bell and a soft reprimand. You're supposed to be good. You're supposed to be quiet and obedient. Stand still and let them do as they please.

You don't like the sound of the bell, and you don't like it when your culler is unhappy. So you talk and move as little as possible.

You don't like it, but you aren't allowed to resist. You're supposed to want to make your culler proud and show their friends and quadrant mates just how good they are at caring for you.

You are cared for. You're given medicine and food and a roof over your head. You've never had worse than an odd bruise or scratch from daily life, and all of those are treated with the urgency of a life-threatening wound. You've never wanted for anything.

You don't know that you should be wanting for anything.

–

Your name is Kankri Vantas. You are three sweeps old. You are a culled troll.

You question your culler about the trolls playing about outside. You're hardly ever allowed outside, you must hold their hand every step of the way when you do. You're told that you're too fragile to do as they do. They're normal trolls with blood that's normal for the spectrum, they have lusii and perfect health and hives all their own.

They're not abnormal like you.

You want for nothing in this hive: you're given food (no more and no less than your culler allows you, don't want you being too fat or too thin, can't have you having foods that could affect your health no matter how good they taste, have to look like a perfect little troll), you're given clothes (wear this on this day and that on the other day, you can't dress yourself properly here wear this instead it will look better on you don't be silly I know it'll look good on you), you know nice trolls (that's their moirail the one who asks questions but doesn't let you answer, that's their matesprit who likes to get too touchy with you, that's their kismesis who talks to you sometimes and keeps their hands to themselves and you like them the best of them all).

You're always looked after to make sure you look your best, like with those braces that make your mouth ache but they say will make your teeth look perfect; like with those neutral grays and blacks with no hint of your color because why show off your mutant blood.

You're so lucky, even for a culled troll. Lowbloods envy the easy, comfortable life you have. You're even allowed to stay out when company comes and be allowed to listen. You sit in the center of the couch with your perfect posture while your hair is pet and your face touched. You speak one or two words before you're talked over and told that the grown-ups are talking. If you speak up the little silver bell left sitting on the end table is picked up and rung, so you quiet again.

And you live your simple, easy life.

–

Your name is Kankri Vantas. You are four sweeps old. You are a culled troll.

You are allowed a husktop by your culler. The websites you visit are strictly limited. You must always sit with the screen angled so that they can see it over your shoulder at all times. You are only allowed it at certain hours when you say so.

When you make friends, your culler watches intently as you introduce yourself with proper language. You barely are able to insist that reading their typing quirks isn't too difficult for you to continue. You are allowed to keep talking to them even though their styles can be a bit outlandish. Good exercise for the mind, mental health is as important as the health of your soft, vulnerable mutant body.

Your friends complain about your limited internet access time, but you can't help it. You're culled. Your culler says that limiting your time on the internet is good for you. Don't want you hurting your eyes by having them set on a screen for too long. You try to type as long as you can before that last minute you get ends and you're forced to say goodbye in a hurry before the device is taken away and your friends are left while you were mid-sentence.

When you're not talking to them, you're reading. Your culler has an extensive library. They always choose the books that you're allowed. When you want a book on a certain subject, they always choose the easiest, least complicated ones.

When they're not in the hive, and you're left alone, you break the rule and sneak into the library to read, heart pounding in your throat the whole time. You pull down volume after volume of harder and harder text. Bulking up on your knowledge all you can and slipping everything back into place down to the last centimeter of space before they return. None the wiser for your transgressions.

You always greet them with a hurting stomach and sweaty hands, waiting for them to see the lie in your eyes when you say you did nothing while they were gone. But they always believe you, you get away with it.

–

Your name is Kankri Vantas. You are five sweeps old. You are a culled troll.

You are papped by your culler and your world is shattered.

You get into another argument with your culler. A more frequent occurrence in this past sweep. You learn more while they are away than in your limited schoolfeeding. You deserve more. You try to ask for more material, you want to learn more. You know you can handle it no matter what they say.

You have fire in your eyes and in your voice while your face flushes with your off-spectrum blood.

Then their hand is against your face, breath hissing between their lips in a soothing stream of air sounds and your stomach lurches. A disgusted scream is ready to burst from your throat when that bell appears in their other hand and it catches there. Your face goes from red to grayish-white while they keep up that echoing sound and their hands just keep on touching you. Your mutant hot skin is icy cold where you are touched and your arms are frozen at your size.

Before you know it you've been dragged to a pile of cushions in the corner of the room. You're up against their chest and you have cool hands on your face and on your chest and your body is made to be calm and content when you just want to cry. You're in the place you'd seen them inhabit with their moirail before turning to look away with mild discomfort, the moirail you no longer see whose name now makes your culler's face tighten.

When it's all over, you're sent to your block and told that you're so much calmer now and isn't that better than all that pointless yelling you were doing?

You stop arguing with them, but you find yourself back in that pile again and again. Sometimes the bell is rung out of nowhere and your body tenses like wood. Then a hand is on your shoulder and a comment about how rigid you are. Then you're in that pile with coolness on you all over again.

You want to tell your friends, but you can't. You're managing to talk with them when your culler is out, now that you can get your husktop even when they're away, and get it back so they don't suspect a thing. What are you going to tell them? That your culler calms you down when you're angry at them? It sounds ridiculous even in your head. So even in the walls and walls of muted gray text you write to your friends, it never gets a mention.

They're just calming you down, like they say.

They're just calming you down and keeping you quiet. And just look how much more quiet you are with them now. A quiet culled troll is a happy culled troll.

Happiness hurts.

–

Your name is Kankri Vantas. You are six sweeps old.

You have begun playing a game with your friends.

Your game has likely destroyed everything of the world you once called home.

You don't think you're going to miss it.

The air outside your hive window is thick and smells almost metallic. Red like your blood plasters the sky and the oily smooth surface of the liquid surrounding the patch of planet you've landed in. In the distance dark shapes threaten in the horizon, but you ignore them for now. All you can do is stare out the window with your forehead to pane until the glass fogs up with your mutant warm breath despite how little you are breathing right now.

A ping from your husktop alerts you to a message from your server player. Latula's teal text pops up with her quirk blazing across the white background. She's going on about all the things you're going to need to do now that you're in, things she learned about from Meenah.

Following her instructions, you fetch the sickles you'd obtained and hidden away for this day. Secretly practicing whenever you get a moment's space from your culler. They were out of the hive when you began playing the game, they had to be when you began, Meenah had told you. You were the only one of your friends to have to worry about this. But you'd timed it, and now here you were. In a hive full of emptiness and an all-encompassing silence.

You are suddenly filled with a spark of nervous energy. Like when you're wanting to go on a rant but sharper. Deeper. Like needles are prickling under your skin and into your heart and if you just want to run and scream and break something into a million pieces.

But you don't. You make yourself be calm and respond to her, then you gather up the things she tells you you might want to get and then begin to head for the machines she had deployed for you earlier.

You pause, though, and stare at your front door in a moment of indecision.

If Latula is still watching you, she'll likely be confused. But it's something you have to do. You run up the stairs and burst into your culler's block without pausing in case you lose your nerve. You burst into the block and start digging through their belongings. Shuffling past clothes and other items in their chest of drawers until you find it.

Then it's a race back down the stairs, bursting out the front door. Running running running though your underexercised lungs and muscles burn you in punishment for it.

You stop at the edge of the land where it drops off into mutant-blood colored liquid. You glance at the silver bell you still have clenched in your grasp, fingers so tense around it that any more pressure might cause the metal to give.

You turn your head out to the horizon, pull your arm back, and hurl it as far out into the distance as you can make it go.

A disconcerting moment occurs when you hear a faint tinkle from it that causes unpleasant shivers down your spine, but the resounding echo ends in a faint splash when it hits the surface of the red sea and swiftly sinks beneath the former glassy stillness.

You stand there just a moment, breathing in the coppery-tasting air and clenching your fists. You take in a breath, let it out, then turn to go back to your hive, hoping Latula won't pry too hard on what she saw.

Your name is Kankri Vantas.

You are six sweeps old.

You are a free troll.

 


End file.
